Brittany Ferries lays keel for LNG ferry

French shipping company Brittany Ferries held a keel laying ceremony for its LNG-fueled cruise ferry, named Honfleur, at the Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellshaft shipyard in Germany.

Besides the keel laying, FSG made advancements in the vessel’s design in order to improve its efficiency and fuel consumption.

For the past three months, the FSG ship theory and hydrodynamics department created a digital model of Honfleur’s hull and testing it using the computational fluid dynamic software.

This allowed them to visualize the size and angle of the bow wave and wake the ship will create, Brittany Ferries said in its statement.

The company added that vessels hull blocks will be welded together and launched into the Baltic Sea during December.

The vessel will operate on the company’s busiest route from Portsmouth to Caen with delivery expected in spring 2019.

In LNG-electric propulsion, four engines feed electric generators and two electric propulsion motors.

The 187-meter vessel will have the capacity to carry 1.680 passengers and a 2,600 vehicle capacity. Upon its arrival, the Brittany Ferries’ cruise-ferry Normandie will move east to serve the Portsmouth-Le Havre route.